Chengdu awards driverless metro contracts

CHENGDU Railway Corporation has awarded two contracts worth a total of €64m to Alstom, its joint venture partner Shanghai Alstom Transport Electrical Equipment (Satee), and Casco, China, to supply traction equipment for 200 metro cars and communications-based train control (CBTC) for phase one of Line 9, the city’s first driverless metro line.

Alstom will supply its OptOnix traction system, which is designed for the Chinese market. The equipment will be manufactured by Satee and Chengdu Alstom Transport Electrical Equipment (Catee), with support from Xi’an Alstom Yongji Electric Equipment and Alstom sites in Belgium and France.

Alstom and Casco will equip Chengdu Line 9 with Alstom’s Urbalis signalling system, and Casco will be responsible for the whole life-cycle management of the system.

The first phase of Line 9 will be about 22km long with 11 stations and will connect the southwest of the city centre with the West mainline station. Line 9 is expected to open by the end of 2020.

Alstom has already supplied traction systems for 1252 metro cars for lines 3, 4 and 5 in Chengdu, and Casco has supplied signalling systems for lines 4 and 7.

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